Wednesday, January 21, 2015

It may have been pure coincidence, but on a day when
President Obama offered up a State of the Union speech that was, when all is
said and done, a bluff, former Obama supporter Thomas Friedman wrote a great column
denouncing the president and his administration for failing to call Islamic
terrorism by its proper name.

We have, on occasion taken exception to Friedman’s columnar
efforts, but fairness requires us to say that his column yesterday was
exceptionally good.

Obama has always been an in-your-face kind of president. His
SOTU speech was more of the same. Evidently, he believes that he stands above
history and above electoral realities. He acted as though he had won last
November’s elections, as though he was a winner.

One suspects that the word “humility” does not exist in his
lexicon. Radically incapable of dealing with failure he keeps pretending that
he has won, that he is in charge, that he is setting the agenda.

For the president all is well in the best of all possible
worlds. The war on terror is going swimmingly, he explained, at a time when
ISIS, under American bombardment has gained more territory in Syria. And, by
the way, did he notice that the government of Yemen fell to Shiite terrorists
yesterday. Last year, in his SOTU address Obama had touted Yemen as a great
success in his war on terror.

When it comes to foreign policy, Thomas Friedman did not have
to wait to hear the SOTU. In his column yesterday Friedman denounced the administration
for its absurd efforts to deny that Islamist terrorism has something to do with
Islam.

For those who care about such things you will notice that, in
this column Friedman has found his voice. He sounds more vigorous, more
forthright and more concise. Gone is the cloying post-adolescent posturing.

He opens with a reflection on the president’s response to
the terrorist attacks, in Paris and elsewhere. The president didn’t show up at the march against Islamist terrorism in
Paris, but he believes that he can make up for it by convening a conference on generic
“extremism.” There he will launch a conversation on the matter with a group of
social workers and imams.

One suspects that they will conclude that incipient
terrorists need counseling and that much of the problem has been provoked by
Israeli settlements.

Friedman responds:

I’ve
never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems, but when I read that the
Obama administration is organizing a Summit on Countering Violent
Extremism for Feb. 18, in response to the Paris killings, I had a visceral
reaction: Is there a box on my tax returns that I can check so my tax dollars
won’t go to pay for this?

The Times is a family newspaper, so Friedman couldn’t say
that the concept produced a bout of nausea, but you get the picture.

Rather than belabor the administration’s flaccid response to
the Paris attacks, Friedman gets to the point in his second paragraph:

When
you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this
administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to
make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions of violence against
civilians (most of them Muslims) by Boko Haram in Nigeria, by the Taliban in
Pakistan, by Al Qaeda in Paris and by jihadists in Yemen and Iraq. We’ve
entered the theater of the absurd.

How bad has it gotten?

It’s gotten so bad that Friedman quotes the editor of
National Review, Rich Lowry. He says that he is quoting Lowry because he himself could
not have said it any better. That is very high praise, indeed. When a liberal Timesman praises a conservative
columnist unstintingly, it is worth underscoring. It is even more notable that Friedman
gives Lowry so much space:

Last
week the conservative columnist Rich
Lowry wrote an essay in Politico Magazine that contained quotes from
White House spokesman Josh Earnest that I could not believe. I was sure they
were made up. But I checked the transcript: 100 percent correct. I can’t say it
better than Lowry did:

“The
administration has lapsed into unselfconscious ridiculousness. Asked why the
administration won’t say [after the Paris attacks] we are at war with radical
Islam, Earnest on Tuesday explained the administration’s first concern ‘is
accuracy. We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who
carried out an act of terrorism, and they later tried to justify that act of
terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it.’

This
makes it sound as if the Charlie Hebdo terrorists set out to commit a random
act of violent extremism and only subsequently, when they realized that they
needed some justification, did they reach for Islam.

The day
before, Earnest had conceded that there are lists of recent ‘examples of
individuals who have cited Islam as they’ve carried out acts of violence.’
Cited Islam? According to the Earnest theory ... purposeless violent extremists
rummage through the scriptures of great faiths, looking for some verses to cite
to support their mayhem and often happen to settle on the holy texts of Islam.”

Friedman accepts that we should not hold all Muslims
accountable for the actions of the terrorists. And he adds that if we have been
doing something to foster these reactions then we should change our approach.

Granting the opposition some credence is a good rhetorical
tactic. It shows that you have considered their arguments before dismissing
them.

And yet, the crux of the matter, Friedman continues, lies in
the fact that these terrorist acts have a source and a rationale… in Islam.

In his words:

Something
else is also at work, and it needs to be discussed. It is the struggle within
Arab and Pakistani Sunni Islam over whether and how to embrace modernity,
pluralism and women’s rights. That struggle drives, and is driven by, the
dysfunctionality of so many Arab states and Pakistan. It has left these
societies with too many young men who have never held a job or a girl’s hand,
who then seek to overcome their humiliation at being left behind, and to find
identity, by “purifying” their worlds of other Muslims who are not sufficiently
pious and of Westerners whom they perceive to be putting Muslims down.

Friedman understands that change must come from within the
Muslim community. But that requires a space where open discussion and debate is
possible. As of today, no such space exists. But that does not excuse the Obama
administration for pretending that the problem requires a few social workers
and a bout of therapy.

In Friedman’s words:

Only
Sunni Arabs and Pakistanis can get inside their narrative and remediate it. But
reformers can only do that if they have a free, secure political space. If
we’re not going to help create space for that internal dialogue, let’s just be
quiet. Don’t say stupid stuff. And don’t hold airy fairy
conferences that dodge the real issues, which many mainstream Muslims know and
are actually starved to discuss, especially women.

It’s not just that the administration is failing to conduct
foreign policy. It is saying stupid stuff, looking ridiculous and detracting
from the seriousness of the problem.

Freidman closes his column by denouncing those politicians
and governments who have allowed themselves to be intimidated and bullied into
soft-pedalling the problem, into exculpating Islam, thus showing the terrorists that their strategy is
working. Friedman all but calls the administration a band of cowards, but his
rhetorical flourish here works better than name-calling:

And a
remarkable piece in The Washington Post Sunday by Asra Q. Nomani, an
American Muslim born in India, called out the “honor corps” — a loose,
well-funded coalition of governments and private individuals “that tries to
silence debate on extremist ideology in order to protect the image of Islam.”
It “throws the label of ‘Islamophobe’ on pundits, journalists and others who
dare to talk about extremist ideology in the religion. ... The official and
unofficial channels work in tandem, harassing, threatening and battling
introspective Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere. ... The bullying often works
to silence critics of Islamic extremism. ... They cause governments, writers
and experts to walk on eggshells.”

2 comments:

I continue to follow my experience: any remarks Tom Friedman makes about domestic politics are silly. Therefore, in separating them, I notice Tom Friedman calls Islamist terrorist Islamic terrorism. Being that this is a sound observation in the foreign policy realm, and has nothing whatsoever to do with his support for climate change lunacy (a rare reprieve), I concur. Can't wait for his next sycophantic Charlie Rose appearance.

How'd you enjoy Obama's State of the Union last night? Any free goodies you received from your deficit-spending wish list? Did you know Obama won the two most recent presidential elections? He seems to relish bringing that up, while calling for "civility." What a petulant child. I also like how we're all supposed to move beyond "politics." Isn't politics the career he chose? Isn't that his job???